Compact Travels - Exploring Places Like Never Before...

My son Ashwyn had told me that South Africa was an interesting country to visit because of its scenic beauty, good roads and European ambience. So I decided to visit the country and since my wife could not join me because of a knee problem, I decided to try the backpacker style of touring. I came across a booklet entitled “Coast to Coast” which had a list of backpacker hostels in South Africa, their locations, and facilities they offered. After research on my own,

I decided to cover the entire 2000 kms journey from Johannesberg to Cape Town on a hop-on and hop-off bus the backpacker way. Luckily, I got in touch with Sanaya Dadachanji of Compact Travels- South African Fundi (Expert), who were one of the participants at a road show held this year at a retail shopping chain in Mumbai.

I discussed the itinerary that I had drawn up and stated the objective of the tour viz. to enjoy the scenic beauties of South Africa. Sanaya then went 'hammer and tongs' on the job of designing the final itinerary taking into account the Hopping Bus timings

After getting my approval of the final tour programme she got down to the task of making reservations with each of the backpacker hostels (nine in all) making bank transfers, booking the Bus excursions, getting my visa and of course booking my air ticket.

Thanks to her diligence, the 17 days tour was planned beautifully and it went off without a hitch. Here are some of my impressions of the tour ---

The towns I visited were Johannesberg, Northern Drakensberg, Central Drakensberg, Durban, Coffee Bay, Port Elizabeth, Knysna, Mossel Bay and Cape Town. The thing that impressed me most was the beautiful roads system.

The 21-seater Bus could keep an average speed of 90 kms per hour. The buses were air conditioned, with comfortable seating and their method of door to door pick up was with absolute precision and convenient too ! The backpacker hostels are situated normally at scenic locations. In some hostels, the rooms are small but the beds are comfortable and the toilets are without exception very clean, with hot and cold running water facilities. The charges for a single room are between 90 Rands (1 Rand=Rs.7) and 200 Rands per night excluding meals. Cheaper accommodation in the form of dormitories with bunk beds are available in most of the backpacker hostels.

The hostels have either their own kitchen where good meals are available at reasonable cost (about 25 to 30 Rands per meal) or are walking distance away from eating places in town. The only exception was Berghaven Cottages in Central Drakensberg where the cottage was entirely self catering and the eating places were 5 kilometres away.

But the cottages itself had a well equipped kitchen and I enjoyed making scrambled eggs on toast and coffee for my breakfast. The management of Berghaven Cottages were helpful in escorting me in their car to some eating places to pick up my dinners and lunches. On this tour I met a number of interesting people; a young German couple with whom I trekked in Northern Drakensberg. They had difficulty in expressing themselves in English and would seek my help whenever they had a problem.

They started calling me their Tour Guide. I met an American environmentalist and because of my interest in organic farming we had a number of common points of interest and had an interesting discussion over dinner. I met three Spanish tourists who had been to India and who talked excitedly about their visit to Jaipur and Jaisalmer and how they enjoyed their trip. The thing I enjoyed most was sitting with a glass of wine (most back-packer hostels have small, cozy bars) with the locals and discussing their history-

Africa, after all, is the birth place of the human race and it has a long history behind it; South Africa particularly has an interesting history over the last 200-300 years !

Amongst the towns I visited, I liked Knysna (pronounced Nysna) the most. This is a small town perched on a hill with a lagoon and a bay in front and a thick evergreen forest at the back. The town has small houses, each with a small garden. It makes a pretty picture.

I was told that Leander Paes has bought a plot of land in this town. I met a fairly big group of Taiwanese tourists and travelled with them in a boat in the “featherbed bay” area of Knysna. Mossel Bay is another interesting place where I went “Whale Watching”. I did see 3 or 4 whales. They come to this part of the Indian Ocean for breeding and then return further south to the Antarctic region.

At Mossel Bay, I also visited the seal island where one can see hundreds of seals sunning themselves lazily on the rocks of the island. As we approached Cape Town darkness had descended on us and the Bus driver took us to a hill from where we got a fantastic view of the city of Cape Town, fully lit. Cape Town has a beautiful coast line.

The town is dominated by the table mountain on one side and small hills and bays on the other side. Since I had bought the full ticket from Johannesberg to Cape Town by Bus, they gave me a free tour of the Cape Peninsula by their bus, a whole day affair with lunch thrown in. This tour took me to Hout Bay, False Bay, Cape Point and the Cape of Good Hope- all very interesting and picturesque places to visit. Near False Bay there was a visit to a location where Penguins had established a colony.

A small 45 minutes trek from Cape Point to the Cape of Good Hope has the most scenic views in South Africa of the Atlantic Ocean. I enjoyed the trek.As a result of the Atlantic Ocean, South Africa has a cooler climate then ours. In August, when I visited South Africa it was near the end of their winter season and the temperatures were between 10 to 15 degree Centigrade. It was like Delhi in winter.

Both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean are blue and greenish blue in colour, unlike the grayish colour of our Arabian Sea. While enjoying the beauty of South Africa there was an undercurrent in my mind about the condition of the original coloured people in this country.

They still live in shanty towns not because there is segregation (apartheid was lifted several years ago) but because their economic condition does not permit them to live in better parts of the towns. Industry and also agriculture is in the hands of the white settlers.

However the blacks now have the opportunity they never had before of improving their economic condition. The country has excellent infrastructure and very fertile soil and it is now upto the blacks to pull up their socks and lift themselves out of poverty. One of the benefits of visiting another country is that your own problems stand out in bold relief!

So the questions that came to my mind as soon as I returned were, 1) When will we have international standard roads? 2) When will we have clean public toilets? 3) When will our 1 billion people have the civic sense to keep our country neat and clean?

It was indeed incredible that Compact Travels organized this memorable 17 days South African Tour for an unbelievable price of Rs.65990/- which inclued airfare, Visa, taxes, accommodation, transport that too for a single traveller.